1991 Gulf War M1 Abrams vs T-72 tank engagement

Tom recounts the episode from Tom Clancy's *Armored Cav* of a stuck-in-mud M1 Abrams that defeated three successive T-72s — the first two firing rounds that bounced off; the third trying to hide behind a sand berm and being killed through the berm via infrared sighting. Tom uses it as the bookend of meaningful tank warfare; he frames tank battles since the 1973 Suez War (2.5-minute average lifetime) as anachronistic in the helicopter-RPG era.

There's a book called Armored Cav[alry] by Tom Clancy. It's the only nonfiction book Tom Clancy's written that I know of. One chapter talks about the '91 Gulf War. So they start the tank assault, and one M1 Abrams gets stuck in some mud near a river, and the other tanks try to pull it out and can't. So they say, okay, you stay here, we'll send in a crane, and we've got to continue our drive toward Baghdad, which they never got to — they were called back.